Rip.so is a nostalgia memorial cataloging roughly 50 dead digital products: ICQ, GeoCities, Flash, Winamp, Palm Pilot, with tombstone-style entries and a live guestbook.
Key Takeaways
Coverage spans messengers (ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, BBM), social networks (MySpace, Vine, Friendster, Orkut), browsers (Netscape, IE), media players, gadgets, and games.
Each entry gives lifespan dates and a short epitaph attributing death to mismanagement, acquisition, or irrelevance.
Google and AOL appear as serial killers: Google shuttered Talk, Reader, Wave, Orkut, and Google+; AOL killed AIM, Winamp, and Bebo.
Some entries blur the alive/dead line: Angelfire, RealPlayer, and Neopets are technically still running but listed as spiritually gone.
The page self-describes as under construction and includes a live guestbook with user entries timestamped April 2026.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters reacted warmly but immediately flagged Skype as a glaring omission, given its collapse mirrors many entries already on the page.
A real UX problem: a flashing yellow bar near the top was called literally impossible to read, as human attention involuntarily tracks the fastest-moving element.
Requests included adding original product logos for sentimental value; one commenter’s specific RealPlayer memory shows the page triggers personal, not just cultural, nostalgia.
